Confirming the industry's worst-kept secret, Valve CEO Gabe Newell has confirmed Valve is working on its 'Steam Box', a Steam-powered HTPC geared towards console-like gaming. It'll most likely run Linux. "Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he told Kotaku. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room." Steam has 50 million subscribers, so there's a market here. As a comparison: Xbox Live has 40 million subscribers.

Well to be fair, they never said they were the new champions of the Free computing movement. They are a business and they are looking for a new, unique way to get their product out to as many people as possible. Windows 8 was going to be a problem for them, so this is their end run.

I try to see the positive from it: This will surely put GNU/Linux in the big picture, and people will start wondering about it and wanting to try it out. "Why buy a Steam box when I can build my own?" said the intrepid gamer teen, etc.